Esearching and Creating Maps of Ecological Functions of Forest in Moscow Region: The Method and Results

Abstract

The article presents some results of the study of the forests ecological functions in Moscow region. The reference landscapes of glacial and water-ice genesis have been chosen in various physico-geographical regions, such as Verkhnevolzhskaya lowland, Klinsko-Dmitrovskaya range, Teplostanskaya Upland, Meshcherskaya lowland. The authors proposed a method of mapping the evaluation of environmental-forming and protective ecological functions. As a basic unit of assessment, an epiassociation is chosen [Sochava, 1972]. The epiassociation represent the ecological condition of the forest cover, as it gives the possibility of using the ratio of indigenous, short-and long-term communities to determine the extent of human impact and preservation of forest ecological functions. The article presents an estimation of the forests cenotic variety for reference landscapes in Moscow region. The authors have also updated the vegetation map of the Moscow region (scale 1 : 200 000). The epiassociation were ranked by groups of environmental-forming ability using the Landsat satellite data. The values of production of oxygen and annual deposition of carbon by forest epiasociations were calculated in accordance with method by [Utkin et al., 2003; Varfolomeev, Mironenko, 2012]. The highest values of the oxygen production are characteristic of small-leaved forests with gray and black alder, hazel and willow in the composition. The authors created unique maps for the evaluation of environmental-forming functions of forest. The protective functions of forests: anti-erosion, water-saving, biostation, conservation of species diversity,-were estimated and described using additional cartographic and other sources of information ecological maps. Conjugated ecological map series was developed as a result of this study.